Cataract, WI
How exposed is Cataract to wildfire?
USFS scores Cataract at the 36th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 168 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Cataract at the 35th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Cataract's 168 counted buildings, 50% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
Cataract against the rest of the country
Cataract's 84th-percentile standing inside Wisconsin outpaces its 36th national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Cataract ranks 20,313 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 26,118 by building count (1 is largest). Within Wisconsin alone, it ranks 131 of 808 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Wisconsin on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Cataract's moderate wildfire rating (36th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 50% of Cataract in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Cataract's 20,313-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Cataract, see the exposure-zones guide.